Islamic State Blows Up 21 Christian Homes

Raymond Ibrahim – Coptic Solidarity – 25/9/15

Earlier this week, the Islamic State blew up 21 homes belonging to Christians in the once Christian majority Nineveh Plain, northeast of Mosul.

An official of the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Mosul further said that the Islamic State has throughout the months detonated “hundreds” of homes in Nineveh Plain, primarily to strike fear into the hearts of the remaining residents.

Earlier, the Islamic State decreed that all schools in Mosul and the Nineveh Plain which bore Christian names, some since the 1700s, must be changed. The teaching of the Syriac language and all Christian religious education has been abolished. Reports indicate that the Islamic State took these moves “in order to erase all traces of cultural and religious pluralism in the conquered areas and turn schools into propaganda tools of jihadist ideology among the new generations.”

Once home to some the oldest Christian communities in existence, since the Islamic State invaded and occupied the Nineveh Plain, numerous Christians have been slaughtered or enslaved, while the rest have fled.

Last June, a Nineveh Provincial Council member said that “more than 120 thousand Christians [were] displaced from Mosul and Nineveh after the Islamic State invaded Mosul.  He further noted that “about 20 thousand of them have migrated Iraq since last year….  The lack of interest of the federal government towards the displaced Christians pushed them to migrate outside the country … the psychological and moral damage was greater than the loss of their money and property as a result of ISIS occupation of Mosul.”

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